[TriLUG] Contemplating Red Hat policy

[A M Thomas]

It's really too bad that Red Hat is giving such a hard time about
preinstalling retail copies.  I have a couple of thoughts on this:

Although I understand that Roberto's probably had enough of Red Hat for
a while, what if, theoretically, his customer "purchased" the Red Hat
set (although Roberto might actually run the errand), then Roberto just
installed it for them?  Then Roberto is not acting as an OEM, but as
someone who does installation work - and just happens to be installing
on a computer he built.  I don't mean to propose something illegal or
even close, and I may not be fully grokking the 'control' issue to which
Ed alludes, but I know I really don't understand RH's position here.

What possible objection would Red Hat have to this activity?  Well,
maybe they would prefer to offer tech support to people who have at
least the experience of going through the install procedure
themselves...did I hear that they were more interested in
server/networking/larger business clients than in home or small office
end users?

- AM